[Vision2020] Beethoven Late Quartets: Opus 130, 133 Grosse Fuge

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68WBx91nQE

My knowledge of music theory and history is limited, yet I think anyone
without a soul of stone would find this music astonishing, ecstatic,
miraculous in the union of complex abstract order with furious passion and
emotion of subtly and tenderness.  Composed at the end of Beethoven's life,
when he was deaf, I can only wonder in my limited way regarding the true
nature of the soul of this genius.

Opus 133 Grosse Fuge (16 plus minutes long) was intended to be the final
movement of the String Quartet No 13, Opus 130, but became a composition
separated to stand on its own, for various reasons.  Nonetheless, the
Guarneri Quartet released a single CD that contains nothing more than Opus
130, 133 Grosse Fuge.  I wonder if Opus 130, !33 Grosse Fuge, has ever been
performed on the Palouse.  The Grosse Fuge is very difficult to perform
correctly.

After listening to this music with full attention of body and mind, most all
other music is rendered trivial, silly, inferior.  especially after the
Grosse Fuge!  This effect fades, as the more ordinary consciousness of
life asserts its demands upon action and thought, which though suggesting
the ordinary consciousness we live in is limited, at least in this
limitation music of less divine perfection can be enjoyed without a sneer.

Amazingly, J. W. N. Sullivan's book "Beethoven: His Spiritual Development,"
an excellent read that explores Beethoven's late quartets, including Opus
130, 133 Grosse Fuge, is available in full online.  Highly recommended!

http://www.archive.org/details/beethovenhisspir002615mbp

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An explanation of why the Grosse Fuge became separated from the quartet Opus
130, is offered below:

http://www.russellsteinberg.com/press-group-18.html

Op. 130 String Quartet in B flat major

During the premiere of op. 130, Beethoven sat in a bar across the street and
waited nervously for his friends to tell him how it went. They told him the
audience demanded an immediate encore of the two dance movements. Beethoven
said, “Yes, sweet trifles, but what about the fugue?” They told him people
were less enthusiastic with the concluding movement, the Grosse Fuge. It was
just too massive and confusing a work for most people to hear after the
already substantial 5 previous movements. Beethoven, enraged, was reported
to have growled, "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should
have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!"
His publisher begged him to write another shorter finale and enticed
Beethoven by offering to pay for it and to publish the Grosse Fuge
separately. Beethoven eventually agreed and even today the quartet is often
played with the shorter finale. Personally I think there is a problem with
this that any audience can hear almost immediately. You see, the Grosse Fuge
is not really an independent piece. It is in every way a summation of what
came before.
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The final dimension that makes the Grosse Fuge so complex is that Beethoven
takes his trademark sforzandos that we’ve heard in his earliest music to
their farthest horizon, so that rhythmic syncopations unfold between all the
instruments with an intensity that makes it nearly impossible to tell the
meter (or grouping) of the music. The opening fugue subject itself deceives
our ears. It is written one beat later than we hear. In other words, it
begins on the weak beats—two and four—instead of on the strong beats—one and
three. Only at the cadence—the end of the subject—do we become aware of this
deception. And then, instead of sounding decisive, the effect on our ears is
that the music accelerates past any sense of downbeat. This last obstacle
keeps many a quartet from being able to perform this piece, and many a
listener from being able to follow!

All these dimensions led avante-garde composer Igor Stravinsky to state that
the Grosse Fuge sounds eternally modern.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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